CI Webinar Series

What You DON’T Know

Our What You DON’T Know webinar series is aimed to educate those who are interested in the background investigation industry.

What You DON’T Know is a 1/2-hour informational session with a Commercial Investigations expert on the truths AND consequences of background investigations.

CI serves up real-life examples of how background checks help businesses and organizations make smart choices and prevent costly missteps in the hiring process. Ignorance in business isn’t bliss.

It can have real consequences. What you don’t know CAN hurt you.

The Dangers of Name Matching Only Procedures (6:07)

  • Yeah, sure. Thanks, Paul. Hi everybody. So, like Paul said, we're gonna talk about the limitations of name matching only. So really like what does that mean? And I think to get a good understanding, because we're basically going to be looking behind the scenes of what's happening at background screening companies out there.

    So you really have to have an understanding of a little bit of background. Let's start with that. So there's consumer reporting agencies is a term you hear a lot, and it comes into play in our industry. You hear CRA and people are like, what's a CRA? Well, CRA is a consumer reporting agency and that's as defined by the FCRA.

    What's the FCRA? The FCRA is the Fair Credit Reporting Act for our purposes. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is the federal law that governs what happens with consumer reporting. So this is a lot of people think of like Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, those are the three large credit bureaus, and they totally come underplay with this.

    But it's also a little bit of a, a wrongfully named law, being that it's the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Even if a background check just contains criminal information, it still falls under the fair credit reporting. So there's a little bit of history. For years and years, the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, which we're all a lot more familiar with than the CFPB, the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau.

    So the for years and years, the Federal Trade Commission governed what happened under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It happened with companies like us and what we do for clients. So a couple of years ago, the government created the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau. Well, this also has authority over what happens under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and, again, what happens with background screening companies.

    So there's a lot of trends and a lot of acronyms used here, and people can think, well, that doesn't apply to us because we're not just, we're not doing. But it applies to all background checks that are done by consumer reporting agencies, even if it's not credit information. So hence all of this comes into play when it comes to background checks.

    We're talking about name match only. So what happened in November, the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau came out with an opinion letter saying that when companies like us, consumer reporting agencies are doing name matching only, it's wrong. And I'm like, well, of course it's wrong. It's always been wrong to Commercial Investigations.

    We don't operate like that. It's like the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau had to go through all the time and energy to put out this opinion letter. So it obviously is happening in our industry way more than I ever was aware of, or way more than it. So what happens at Commercial Investigations that were so different?

    Well, we have access to different data sets and different, and we triangulate data, and we use human intervention, but we're getting deep into an issue right now. So let's, let's talk about Michael White and let's bring this to light by talking about a situation. So I like to refer to Michael White.

    Michael White wants to chaperone his daughter's trip to Disney for her cheer competition because his wife has a conference that day. He's also giving back to his community and being a youth minister before his kids are old enough to be at that age, and they're not going to want him being a youth minister. Then his youngest asks him to coach his little league team.

    So within six months, Michael White is going to have three different background checks done. Now Michael White is not really one person, there are over a thousand Michael Whites in the US, so if that's a name match is Michael White. So what happens when there's a background screening company that does a name match only, and you run a multi-jurisdictional database or a criminal record check or a sex offender registry, you're going to see there's a number of Michael Whites that are sex offenders in a number of different states.

    But how do you know if that's your Mike. How do you know what your background screening company is doing? How do you know what they use to identify? So this is where it opens up for you as consumers to ask your background screening company or for you to know what we do here at Commercial investigations if you're a consumer of us.

    A lot of searches are run by names, and we'll get name match only, but there's almost always another piece of identifying information. We talk about personal identifying information. Pii very, very similar across all industries. Name, date of birth, social security number, and address. Those are the four main personal identifying information that come into play.

    Besides name, what other information can we match on? And a lot of times it'll be a year of birth or a date of birth, or a partial social, or a complete social or an address. So we can triangulate our data, so we get the data we can, and then we have a third party private investigative databases that only private investigative agencies can access where we triangulate that data.

    We can put in a name and say, well, oh my gosh, there's over a thousand Michael Whites in the US, but let's see how many Michael Whites have ever resided in Chen County, New York. Okay, there we go. And of those, Michael White, what social security numbers do those white have, and how does that match the social security number or the last four judges of the social security number that we have?

    So we're not doing name match only, but what I'm explaining to you requires human intervention. So it is a little more costly. We are staffed much more heavily than a consumer reporting agency that just automates this whole process and just basically passes through to its consumer something that says this is a name match only.

    That's behind the scenes and that's what's happening at Commercial Investigations. Now for other background screening companies, obviously they're doing name matching only, or the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau never would've come out with this opinion. So that's a little bit of summary, a lot of terms for you.

    What are your questions?

The Basics of Compliant Drug Testing (9:00)

  • The first thing I wanna start, or how I wanna start, is by saying that there's no real such thing as a standard drug test, right? There's not one drug test that goes, here's your drug test. This is what everybody uses everywhere. The most common types are a nine panel or a 10 panel drug test. For example, those tests are categorized by panels.

    Those panels are categories of drugs, not actually specific drugs. So for example, amphetamines is one panel of a test, but they actually include multiple drugs under that. Barbiturate or barbiturates is another one, sleeping pills, downers, they actually have five to six drugs underneath that one panel category.

    When you do a drug test, you're not actually searching for one specific drug at a time. You're searching through a whole category of them. The main difference between a nine or a 10 panel is in a 10 panel, we usually include opiates and a nine panel will not.

    Here at Commercial Investigations, we're able to provide that standard nine or 10 panel. We have a 10 panel plus oxy, and we also have a 10 panel plus expanded opiates plus MDMA and then minus thc. If that's something that your business is interested in doing, that test that I just mentioned, is our best one.

    That usually keeps everything fully compliant that you may need, and then also if you're thinking about removing that thc, we have that option for you as well. You may have noticed, or you may have caught, that I said a 10 panel oxy and a 10 panel expanded opiates. Aren't those the same thing? Right.

    You might be thinking that they're actually not the same thing. Oxy is an opioid, which is man-made synthetic. It's made to act like an opiate, which is natural. Those react differently in your brain, and therefore they need to be tested for differently. So that's why I say we have those two separate tests there.

    And any of the ones that I say today are all urine tests. That's basically the ones that we deal with the most here, so any of those ones that I mention are ones that I'm going to mention, you can think a urine test, right? Occasionally we get clients that get a little nervous because they say they order a nine panel drug test, and they see 14 different drugs on that panel.

    And, what the hell happened? There must have been a mistake, right? There's not, slow down. The first thing you need to know is that there are a couple different types of labs in New York, so Commercial Investigations use as LabCorp and Quest as our labs. They report slightly differently, but they look pretty much the same on your end.

    I need to clarify before going any further that labs and testing sites are two different locations. Okay, so when your applicant goes into the testing site, to give their test, that is not the lab. That needs to be sent to the lab to be tested and then sent back to you with the results.

    So sometimes we get clients asking, well, my applicant went in today, and they put their test in today. Where are my results? Well, they're not ready, the test is still at the testing facility. It's not at the lab yet. That's something that we, we just like to clarify for clients.

    Going back to that test, if you see that you have more than nine drugs on your nine panel drug test, you did not get charged anything extra. You still ran a nine panel drug test. That means, though, is that your applicant hit on a couple of those drugs in one of those panels, in one of those categories, so if you see more than nine, that means that your applicant did hit on one of those.

    At that point, we would recommend that you reach out to your applicant and ask about possibly any prescriptions that they might have, or if there is any legitimate reason that they would've hit on one of those tests.

    So can I just

    Yes. Yeah, stop you for one quick second there.

    So, the MRO, the medical review officer would actually reach out to the applicant, and they will reach out several times, and hopefully reach them. And if what they tested positive for is a valid prescription, they would then pass the results on to us as negative. If they don't, the donor then they may send us results that may state that they are positive, but not being evaluated by the MRO at that point.

    If they have a valid prescription, so it's not the client themselves that would, you know, first off, be reaching out to them if a positive result comes back. The MRO would actually be the first one that either spoke with them or tried to reach out to. Okay.

    Yeah. Yep, so before we open up the floor for questions for you, Yvette, what would happen if the MRO was not able to contact the applicant after that Applicant tested positive for one of those drugs?

    So they'll only reach out a couple of times because they can't keep all the results just kind of hanging out, waiting to speak to someone. So after attempting a couple of times, if they don't hear back, they will send the results to us and in turn the client, and you'll see that the full result will state non-contact positive.

    So if it says non-contact positive, it means just that they did not make contact with the donor, so they did not, the opportunity to verify whether or not, they had a valid prescription for the drug that they tested positive for. So in that case, what I recommend is that you reach out to your applicant and ask them to reach out to the MRO.

    And possibly the MRO had a wrong phone number, that's the reason they couldn't reach them, something like that. So you want to reach out to your applicant and ask them to call the MRO office and talk with them. And then if the results would change based off of their conversation, they would send us an updated report, the initial electronic chain of custody form that you give your applicant, or they can pull it up online.

    Not necessarily have to print it out on paper, but it will have the contact information for the MRO doctor. There is a phone number right there, so that is the number that you would want to direct them to call and speak with someone.

    Okay. Okay. Another one that we get that's fairly popular with our clients is what does it mean when a test shows up negative dilute? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? What does that mean for my applicant?

    So negative, dilute number one. The good thing is, is that this does not mean that anything at all tested positive. There's no, it was sort of positive. It might have been positive. Nothing has come back positive. What that means is that the specimen has basically too much water in it, like an unusual amount of water. So it could just be human being drinks a lot of water, or it could be that they are, you know, attempting to possibly skew the test.

    I get a common question, Well, what should I do? If you do not want your applicant's report to just state negative dilute. If you have to have a, you know, a negative result to be compliant, then you know, my recommendation is that you would have to set them up for a second test. You would have to send them for a second test.

    So you would want to speak with them and, you know, explain to them that we would want you to go first thing in the morning, don't drink a lot of liquids before you go, and that kind of thing. So that way you're kind of letting them know that, you know, you don't want to be drinking a lot, we just want to make sure that the results that we're getting are a hundred percent accurate, right?

    Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And as a New York State employer, how do, how do businesses remain compliant with the new marijuana laws, the MRTA law? How do people do that? How do, how do you stay compliant?

    Well, so what I tell people is to check with your legal counsel because it's a very confusing situation as it is now. When you have that marijuana is illegal federally, but yet states can make up their own, you know, laws as far as whether it's legal for medicinal purposes, whether it's legal for social purposes, or both. It makes it very confusing for employers and very difficult to kind of know what to do as far as what is the right thing. So I recommend that each company reaches out to their legal counsel for advice on what to do with.

An Overview of Ban the Box Laws (10:49)

  • Hi everybody, today Alex asked me to talk about Ban the Box. To start with, having a criminal history has prevented applicants from being hired regardless of how long ago the criminal record took place, how minor the infraction was and maybe is, regardless of how good of a fit they really would be for the position.

    Over 70 million Americans have a criminal record, and those with a criminal record face high rates of unemployment and recidivism. I didn't know what recidivism was years ago, but recidivism is the likelihood to recommit a crime basically. Then, disparate impact discrimination comes into play here when sometimes you have a seemingly neutral policy and it affects more than one race.

    That's what is trying to be avoided here. Then sometimes there's criminal background checks that don't really distinguish between what an arrest and what a conviction is. So there's a little bit of statistics and background as to why Ban the Box exist. But it's really like, what is Ban the Box?

    I wanna start with, before we talk about what it is, let's talk about really what it's not. And for today's purposes and all the purposes, those of us in New York know about Article 23 A, Ban The Box is not Article 23 A. That's something different. That's a much more involved topic for another time.

    It is also not a salary history ban. That's another topic for another day. So Ban the Box does not have to do with Article 23 A, doesn't have to do with the E E O C guidelines for criminal records. On a federal level, it's another topic. It's Ban The Box simply has to do with the box. What? What's the box?

    So recently in the last few years, people have really been calling it the Fair Chance Act and that was just a legislative play on words and some of the more recent jurisdictions in states to pass law. Have laws have been calling 'em Fair Chance Act or Fair Chance Laws, but essentially Ban the Box and Fair Chance Laws are interchangable.

    Let's go back to the original term, Ban the Box. Ban The Box started in 1998 in Hawaii. Hawaii was the first state to pass a ban the box law. What are they banning? We can all remember, well, maybe not all of us, maybe not like Alex,Tyler, Vivy on here, a couple of my colleagues, you know, but back in the day on a job application, it used to ask, have you been convicted of a crime?

    Have you been arrested? Have you been convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony? And usually there was a box that you had to check. And when we say ban the box, it's simply that little check. Now it's not literal in that, well, if you have a line, it doesn't apply to you. It's anytime you ask those questions.

    But they call it ban the box because most forms had the box. Now what a lot of people don't realize or they realize is, now that things have evolved and there's now background checks and other parts of the process, there's also automation. The box doesn't necessarily just exist on an application for employment.

    It can also exist on a consent for a background. We have the option to ban the box or to have the box when the clients have their subjects go through and consent to and authorize the background check and fill out their information. When you're thinking about complying with Ban the Box or Fair Chance Legislation, you gotta think about all the points along the process that your applicants go through, where they might be faced with a box.

    Basically you cannot ask that question, and let's just say the question is like we ask in New York State, we ask, have you ever been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony? In New York state, that's where we're headquartered. A crime is defined as a misdemeanor or felony in New York State. Under the New York Human Rights Law, you cannot take adverse action on somebody based upon arrest information.

    It either has to be a pending case or a conviction. We ask, have you ever been convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony? Then we also ask, on some of our forms, do you have any pending criminal action against you. Basically that's the stuff that you have to be careful with. Now, when they say ban the box, it doesn't mean ban it forever.

    You have to ban it to a certain point in the process, okay? Most of the laws require you to bring out the box after you've made a conditional job offer. So that's pretty consistent. But it's not always the be all, end all. You really gotta know the little laws of all the land. And it's not only on a state by state level, there's also cities and counties that have their own legislation involving Ban the Box.

    So it's very involved for some of our clients, especially if they operate in multiple jurisdictions, even multiple places within New York State. And we're gonna get to that in just a little bit. So what you're looking for, when a Ban the Box law exists, basically, who does it apply to? Some ban The box laws are just out there for public employers, for the government, for county offices in that particular county.

    Some ban the box laws like Rochester and Buffalo and New York City apply to private employers. So that's the first thing. What type of employer are you and does the Ban the Box apply to? Okay, so then once you determine if it applies or if it doesn't, obviously go on and you don't have to worry about the box, if it does apply to you, then the next thing is at what point can you ask the question?

    So we've had people think that because you have to ban the box means you can never ask that applicant if they've been convicted of crime. That's not it. It's when you can ask it. So some laws are as light as once you've made initial contact and shown some interest.

    So say you do telephone interviews. If you've done a telephone interview and you've liked somebody, but say you wanna do the background check before you do the formal interview and get a lot of people involved in the process and spend a lot of everybody's money and stuff like that, then if you've met that requirement of the ban the box that you've made, initial contact and done a telephone interview, then you can do the background check.

    But if your jurisdiction says you have to have made that conditional offer, then you have to keep going through your hiring process, make the conditional offer, and then you can ask the question, have you ever been convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony? Okay, now what's happened in this day and age when we can't and, all of our clients, you're struggling to get candidates in the door, so you're hiring as fast as you can.

    So our clients have gone from interviewing, running the background check, making an offer to interviewing, making an offer, running the background check. Most of our clients are making conditional offers, and we are as well, you know, we're feeling it. We're making a conditional job offer as soon as we can.

    Conditional on the background check, the drug test, everything coming back okay. If you do pre physicals or other things, all of that being. Most people have converted to conditional job offers at this point in time. Then you start the background check, so we can ask that question.

    For our clients, even though you're in a ban the box jurisdiction, if you are making a conditional job offer before you start the background check, you can then ask that question as part of the authorization and consent that the subject goes through. For a lot of our clients, we aren't really changing.

    Those are the questions and the situation that you have to ask yourself is the point in time. In general, does the law apply to you? At what point in time can you ask that question? And how does that work for your processes? Okay, Buffalo announced Ban the Box for the private and public sectors in 2013.

    The city of Rochester did it in 2012 for 2014 in Rochester for public and private sector. And then it was like 2015, New York City did it and New York City just did some enhancements to theirs as well. They created a tiered system in New York City. If you can comply with that, then there are some exceptions that you have to work through.

    But again, a lot of it in these jurisdictions has to do with if you're making a conditional job offer, then starting the background check, then you can let it go and ask that question. Through your background screening vendor like us, if you have that question on your application or some other hiring document, you have to look at, at what point in time you're having the subject fill that out, or do you want to get rid of that question on a job?

    Say somebody comes in for an interview and your process is to have them fill out that job application before they're done. Most of the time you're going to want to make sure that the box is not on that form because you haven't yet made a conditional job offer. We do things a little different. We get the application on file because it's got certain information that we want on file, on everybody.

    But generally it's after we've even started the background check. It's usually like the first day of employment or right after we made the conditional job offer. In our case, it doesn't matter if that question is on there. Then we ask it with the background check too.

    A couple of things that you need to look at is, is there a Ban the box law in my jurisdiction? Where all do you have? Do you have multiple locations that you're hiring people for? Checking all those locations, if there is a ban the box, at what point in the process can you ask the question that leads to the box checking? How that flows with your process if you're doing a conditional job offer, and if that's the right time according to all those different, laws that may come into play for you to go ahead and ask that question.

    You gotta kinda do a little self assessment. I'm available on the side, so are my colleagues to help answer any questions. With that, but simply what you really wanna hone in on with the box is what type of question, if any, are you asking in regards to an applicant's past criminal activity?

Hiring Volunteers: The Rules and Regulations (6:01)

  • I will get started, a little bit of background to go over first. There are basically two important governing entities that you need to know about when talking about hiring volunteers. The first one is the Fair Labor Standards Act, or the FLSA. That is the federal law, which sets minimum wage over time, record keeping, and child labor standards in the United States.

    It covers all employers that engage in interstate commerce. Sometimes smaller businesses think that they might not qualify because they don't have enough employees, it doesn't matter if you engage in interstate commerce, you are subject to the FLSA. The Wage and Hour division of the US Department of Labor, they enforce all those rules, set forth by the FLSA.

    So the Wage and Hour Division does define employee and volunteer a little bit differently. An employee is a worker who performs services for the employer, and the employer controls how and what the employee will do for each standard. Right? Employees must be paid at least the minimum wage, and they receive overtime for any hours over 40 in that work week. Pretty standard.

    They define a volunteer as someone who donates his or to time or energy without receiving financial or material gain. The most common types of volunteering that we see are fundraising and teaching as well. Under the FLSA regulations, an individual cannot volunteer their services for a private, for-profit company for that reason.

    We really want to avoid all those for-profit volunteers that you hear all about, going on. Federally, employment relations are not formed when an individual volunteers services to a religious, charitable, or non-profit organization. And what do I mean by employment relations, Right?

    All that means is that the volunteer has an expectation of compensation. So if they volunteer their services for a religious, charitable, or non-profit organization, they are not subject to the FLSA regulations and that employer does not have to pay those volunteers. They are full volunteering their time out of the kindness of their heart.

    For example, a church might staff a fundraising arm, full of volunteers, and that's totally fine. They do not have to pay those people. But let's say that they also have a shuttle driver that's paid and brings elderly people to the church every Sunday or something like that. Let's say he wants to volunteer his time driving for some event that they have that driver, because he is paid, will not be able to volunteer for.

    He is able to do something other than his original job, but he is not, if he were to drive, he would be considered a paid employee. So that's kind of the very subtle difference that we, that you have to watch out for. New York state defines a volunteer, the person who works for the non-profit, under no contract of hire, and with no promise of compensation other than reimbursement.

    Right? So in New York State, volunteers expect to receive compensation for their services. Reimbursement is not compensation like we just said, and I think we actually had, a question about volunteer stipends over this week. So I think we'll go over a little bit of that a little bit later. What that all means, and if you're allowed to do those type of things, volunteers cannot displace any genuine or paid employees.

    A little bit like what we talked about just a second ago. The law says that they're only allowed to do tasks that are traditionally reserved for volunteers. I know that's a little bit confusing in a little gray area, and I'll go over it in just a second here. Volunteers are only allowed to work certain hours, obviously, and they cannot be under any contract from the employer.

    Some of the more redundant, obvious ones are they cannot be forced to do things involuntary, and again, they cannot be forced to work hours. So obviously like volunteers, but that law is a little bit confusing, right? Traditionally reserved for volunteers? What, what does that exactly mean? Well, the unfortunate thing is the Department of Labor doesn't necessarily know either.

    Their position is that when a volunteer, a volunteer, cannot provide services that would normally or reasonably be expected to be performed by a paid employee. So that is really all that there is on the New York State website for specifically talking about that one thing. It's really more of a judgment call for your business, depends on the size of your business, different roles that you have, things like that.

    To be careful with those compensation packages, the Department of Labor has actually investigated companies that have given gift cards to volunteers as a form of payments. Any compensation beyond reimbursement for expenses that you as an employer give to a volunteer, no matter how good of heart it is. No matter what you mean by it, it still could be in violation of the FLSA regulations, so you have to really, really be careful about that. Here at Commercial Investigations, we have kind of a non-profit volunteer, best practices that we use.

    We start with our origin search, which just means that we're making sure your volunteer is who they say they are, and they're the correct person. We do our county and federal searches to get those different levels of criminal offenses. And we also do a sex offender registry search if your company works with children or anything like that.

    We also have drug tests if you're a company-wide thing or if you have specific jobs like we talked about earlier. We do a motor search, like if you have any drivers or things like that. Or if you hire an accountant or a finance person, we can do a credit check or something like that as well.

    That's kind of the standard. For volunteers that we use for New York State, so that's kind of the whole speech here. I am now going to turn it over to Tyler to go over some of our questions from the week.

    Thank you very much.

The Basics of Credit Reporting (5:33)

  • A little bit of background to start, there's basically two governing bodies that you need to know when you talk about credit reports. So the first one is the FCRA, and if you've been here before, you've heard us talk about the FCRA a million times. That's the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

    That governs how CRAs are supposed to be policed. What's a CRA? Right? A CRA is a Consumer Reporting Agency, that's what we do, it's Commercial Investigations. We have to go by the FCRA guidelines. The other major one you need to know about is the EEOC. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, they administer and enforce civil rights laws in the workplace.

    They do not enforce the FCRA, however. The US Trade Commission enforces the FCRA. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces equal Employment Opportunity laws. So they oversee how employers can use the information on credit checks, and they prohibit employers from illegally discriminating against those people.

    For example, an employer can't apply the same information to two different groups that they get from a credit report. They wanna really level that playing field for everybody. Why do employers use pre-employment credit checks? Well, for one reason, credit checks give a detailed history of borrowing and paying off money. Right?

    They include current past assets, liabilities, car ownership, house ownership, length of residents at the address bank accounts. All that stuff, all of those can be signals, that your applicant could be outside a risk or, fraud for their financial responsibility. We really only use credit checks for applicants in positions that will handle money.

    You really don't need it otherwise than that, and there are the big three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Here at Commercial Investigations, we use TransUnion pretty much exclusively. There's pros and cons to that, I think we'll touch on a little bit later. So what exactly is a credit check looking for?

    To start, an employer cannot see your credit score, so that's one of our biggest questions that we get from applicants that call in. Employers not able to see your credit score. They are able to see some personal information, like your social security number, and they're able to see your address and a little bit of address history as well.

    They are not able to see your date of birth, for example, on your credit report, and that's to avoid discrimination with the EEOC again. The report will show your payment record, the amount you owe, available credit also shows debts, mortgage card, all that stuff that we just touched on.

    The reports pulled from background investigations specifically are considered soft, so they don't actually affect your credit score when we search it. For example, like if you were to go buy a new car, and they asked you to do run a credit report, that would be considered a hard inquiry and that would affect your credit score. For background investigations, it does not.

    Under the FCRA, there are a couple of things that employers must do and, and actually must not do when considering a credit check, for a potential applicant. You do have to get written approval from the applicant, so you do need a consent form.

    You do need to notify the applicant and get that written back to you before you start. Generally, the credit reports don't date back farther than seven to 10 years. That's just kind of a basic best practices. They are able to do that, but usually we don't go back more than seven to 10 years.

    There are laws regarding bankruptcy information as well. Applicants are not allowed to be discriminated against solely because they filed for bankruptcy. On an employer's side, bankruptcies are fairly easy to obtain their public information, so anybody can find that stuff anyway. From the applicant side, the applicant must be told if the report is going to be used against them.

    If you find adverse information in that report for any reason, you do have to let your applicant know that they do have the right to see the full report, and they do have the right to receive it for free, and then they can dispute all that information in there as well.

    However, in that report, they give contact information for say, TransUnion or us, if we were to run it. New York State, otherwise, really doesn't do too much difference other than federal laws. New York State uses the FCRA to govern the credit checks. Again, we can't, we really wanna focus on only jobs that are going to be handling money to use credit checks for.

    Other than that, you really don't need them, and then the New York State Department of Labor does have their own equal Employment Opportunity Division. They stay kind of congruent with the EEOC and kind of follow their same guidelines. At Commercial Investigations, we actually use four different types of personal identifying information when we look for these credit checks.

    We recommend that you don't utilize this inquiry unless it's for tenant screening, or it's related to job functions and compliance with, you know, with. If your applicant is going to be handling any money or anything like that. Not all CRAs offer credit checks, they are decently expensive to offer. So that's another perk that we have. We do offer those credit checks, for any employers that might need them.

    So, thank you for listening to me. I am going to cut off my recording right now, real quick.

Technology in Background Investigations (10:23)

  • Right, welcome everyone, appreciate you spending some time with us this afternoon. We're gonna talk a little bit about the, the benefits of technology that are available to us now in the background screening industry, and some stuff specific to us here at Commercial Investigations. And I, I just thought I'd add, you know, I'm, I'm uniquely qualified to to talk about the benefits of technology.

    When I started my career no one had a cell phone, emails weren't a thing yet. So I'm, you know, I'm, I'm amazed at, at what's available to us these days. So, but, you know, one, one thing that's really important in, in background screening, and this is just kind of goes across the board, is some of the key things that, that, that, you know, we, that's important to us and important to our clients is, you know, accuracy, turnaround time and compliance, those are three big things.

    We gotta make sure we're getting the information right, we get it to you quickly, and that we're, we're compliant with the laws. And the, the beauty of the technology that's available to us now is, it helps us do all those things that much better.

    You know, key information's more readily available and accessible, we can save time by not waiting for fax to show up or waiting for stuff to come through the mail or emails. Everything's operating through our software for the most part. There's electronic signatures, which, which help the process move along quicker and, and, by stuff being entered right into the software and the technology that's available with, with the, with the order entry information, you run a bigger or less risk of any kind of transcription errors as, as people are taking the fax off the fax machine and then typing information in, you know, flip flopping numbers on a social security number, stuff like that.

    You minimize the risk of those kind of things. So technology helps us transfer information quicker and, and more accurate. So, you know, some of the key things that you know I'm gonna talk about today is, is the electronic forms. So obviously there's a lot of paperwork that's associated with this, this kind of work.

    Obviously there's compliance forms, there's, you know, all kinds of authorizations, disclosures. All those sendings now can be captured electronically through the applicant form. It eliminates need for, for emailing and faxing forms, and it just speeds up the process again. Speeds it up and helps it with accuracy.

    The federal, the Fair Credit Reporting Act documents are always included, so they're readily available. So, you know, from a compliance perspective, everything's being covered. Article 23, a state specific forms, you know, autopopulate, so depending on where the applicant is, I mean, if you're hiring someone from outta state, you know, the right form's gonna be right there.

    Again, it just, it just helps with speeding up the process, making sure the right stuff is in the right place. Instant credit checks, you know, for, for clients that use credit,credit checks, you know, those things happen pretty quickly. You know, it's no different than when you go buy a car.

    You can get that information pretty quickly too. But again, the technology's really available to us to, to get that information. Another, another key fact feature is, you know, when if for, for clients to be using drug screening, obviously we're working with some other, other vendors on that, some third party suppliers on that.

    The nice thing about some of the technology that's available is, you know, again, going in through, through our software, you have access into the other software. So there's a direct connection in, you know, clients can, you know, can put in their information. Set up their drug screening, find out where to go, get their electronic chain of custody form.

    Everything comes right through. They have it on their phone, they can go to the test site. Everything's right there. You're not waiting for something to get mailed to you, that kind of thing. So it just, again, speeds up the process. Everything happens with a few clicks, just really help, helps make things run a lot smoothly.

    I mean, you know, we're seeing these kind of benefits everywhere else too. I mean, you order something on Home Depot, you come over with a barcode on your phone and get what you wanted. It's in a locker, the door opens up for you. Couple other things from a recruiter experience perspective, you know, it's, it's much easier now to to order what you, what you're looking for, you know, you know, some of the work up front, setting up the packages, that kind of thing.

    Whether you're doing an a la carte package or anything like that, you know, the key information, you just enter it in, you hit submit, and the process gets started. So the process just is a lot smoother from a, from a, from a recruiter's perspective, for anything that goes back and forth between us and the subject.

    You know, we can do some branding, branding emails. We can put, you know, custom information on for, for our client. So it, it's a little more, it creates a sense of trust with the applicant that, oh, okay, this is coming from, you know, the place that I'm, that I'm looking to get a job with. So it, it just, you know, we can add some branding and some customization there that, that just helps, just makes the process look cleaner and, and help, help with your communication with your, with your subject or your applicant as well.

    We also do in, in our system, have a, a customer service inquiry opportunity where if you're in the system and you're working on, on a, on a report, you can click, click a link, it'll pop a window open. You can say, hey, you know, Commercial Investigations, where am I at with this project? Where am I at with this report?

    Things like that, and that'll communicate to us directly. So you don't have to go out, get on your phone, call somebody or go to your email, send a separate email. You can do it all right through the software. So that technology feature is really handy. Just from a, a quick update. It goes into a, a manned email account on our end so we can, we can answer those questions pretty quick.

    Obviously, you know, one big benefit of of some of the technology that's out here is, is database searches. Databases are, are more, more regular are granted in our industry. You, we still end up having to call courts and have people manually go through files, things like that. You know, it's, some of the databases that we have access to, you can, you can compare results, you can do crosschecks verifications, things like that. So the, the data accessibility is, is really helps smooth things along.

    One other feature I want to talk about is pre-adverse, adverse action ladders. So obviously if you have an applicant that you choose not to move forward with because of something in their history, again, it's a, it's a click of a button through the system to get the, the pre-adverse letter going.

    It's something you can put onto your own letterhead and send it out, and then when you have to do the, the adverse action, you can get a copy of what you need to get a copy of and get it off to the, to the subject that way. So, again, all that stuff is very accessible and easy, easy to manage.

    Some stuff that's, that's very specific to, to Commercial Investigations. You know, one feature we have is is called the aqi, which is the applicant quick invite, which is a, a really quick and simple way to get the process started. From a recruiter perspective, you, you know, put the name and the email address of, of the applicant hit, you know, pick the package that we, that we've already pre discussed,and hit submit.

    And you know, an email goes off to the client with a. It can be customized to you, and they start putting in their information. So again, it smooths up the process makes it quicker. So they're entering their own information. They're not sending it to you and you putting it in again with transcription error possibilities.

    They're not sending it to us in the mail. It's coming through our system, already preloaded. Our investigators get right on the job working with the information that the, the applicant has put through. The other good piece of it is, again like I mentioned earlier, some of the electronic forms is the applicant is getting all the appropriate forms right in that link that they need to sign electronically, electronic signature. They can download a copy of it if they want, but then everything is attached to that file that we need to do. From our perspective, from a client compliance perspective and from just getting the job started, we have all the key information for that client.

    Obviously, technology from a recruiter's perspective, the recruit recruiter experience, you know, our, you know, our website or our, our software that you have, that our clients have, access to through their, through their user connections. Everything's pretty easy to use. It's pretty, everything you have is available to you.

    We do do integrations with clients, so if you have a particular applicant tracking system that you work through, we can, we can work with our, you know, work with your folks and set up a integration so you can work right through your app and tracking system, and it'll connect and send information right into our system.

    Again, you know, kind of smoothing up the process for you so you're not going in and out of too many sites. We do that with a number of clients have the ability to do all kinds of different customizations there as well. One key thing is, you know, for end users, you know, you have, you know, you have an account set up, you have different end users set up.

    We can, you know, add end users, make changes, change permissions for, you know, depending on how your organization is set up, so it's all about, you know, kind of communicating to us what you're looking for and we can customize your experience with our software to your needs. So again, a lot of it's pretty easily done.

    It's a little more complicated, but, you know, once we get it set up, it, it's kind of a click of a button and you're, and you're ready to rock and roll. So, that's about it. I just wanted to kind of touch on a number of the key things where, you know, we have a lot of benefits to us now with the technology that's out there to really smooth up the process and make sure it's accurate and compliant, so the process that you experience is, is smooth.

The Basics of Social Media / Cyber Investigations (4:06)

  • I'm Yahzmine, and I'll be talking about social media backgrounds and social media scans today. The FCRA is a set of guidelines that governs how CRAs are able to perform background checks. And a, a CRA is a consumer report agency just like us. So what is a social media scan? A social media background check is when employers review a job candidate's social media profile during the hiring process.

    Essentially, it's using the information that is public to perform a background check. However, if it is done without regarding the CRA standards, it can be illegal. Looking at any social media means that employers are potentially exposing themselves to FFC violations and discrimination suits. The legal risks come from the information the hiring manager learns, which the candidate can later claim was the reason they weren't hired.

    Protected information, any information that could subject the employer to discrimination. Lawsuits are things like age, race, physical characteristics, and religious and political affiliations. This protected information is why we recommend using a third party background check company to complete a social media scan.

    What does a social media scan search for? Social media searches allow for a rare glimpse into a candidate's thoughts, opinions, and thought processes. It reveals information that would be difficult to obtain in the normal interviewing process. Specific guidelines on what to search for are set by the employers.

    But social media scans can uncover things like a cultural fit. It can find that the person may not be a good fit culturally because of X, Y, or Z behavior, or the behavior that they share demonstrates that they aren't someone who uses good judgment, for example, great skill assessment. Primarily through LinkedIn, you're able to see who is the most well-rounded, personalities, or passions. They can see if an applicant is involved in community services or if they enjoy writing in their free time.

    Potentially adverse information are things like violent, sexist, racist rhetoric or person, pictures of people partying all night. The FCRA guidelines state that the only public information that is allowed to be used when conducting a social media background check.

    A class of protected information that employers cannot use against applicants. Like any other background check, the FCRA has applicant guidelines CRAs have to follow. Applicants must consent to the search, we provide a specific note during the process. We give them the opportunity to dispute the information we find, and they require the report won't be used in a way that would violate federal or state equal employment opportunity laws or regulations. The FCRA also must take reasonable steps to ensure that the maximum possible accuracy of what's reported from the social media networks and that it relates to the correct person.

    CI provides two levels of cyber investigations. In level one, investigators conduct a search using key terms to find results. We find things like offensive postings and activities by a subject that may reflect negatively on the employer involvement in illegal activities and groups. And how may or may not follow a how a subject may, may or may not follow a company's IT protocols.

    Providing a tracking record of the use of information systems, including data protection for the CI's level two. We utilize multiple search engines, social media, business profiles, address histories, you do cyber identities, disclose online activities, current and archived internet sites, exclusive illicit activity searches, and this IS within a seven-year period.

    CI recommends using a third, a third party background screener in order to protect yourself against any discrimination lawsuits that could occur.

The Basics of Pre Employment Verifications (9:00)

  • All right. Thanks for the introduction, Alex. I'm Mariah. I'm an investigative trainee here at CI, and as Alex did, I'm going to be talking about verifications today. We do three main types of verifications at Commercial Investigations. Education verifications, employment verifications, and reference checks.

    And these are all about getting the right applicant for the right job. Most people want to look good in an interview, so naturally they tend to stretch the truth, even just a little. Even if it's harmless, it's definitely still the right decision to verify your applicant's resume. At Commercial Investigations, we do about 6,000 education verifications a year, and just about 10% of those are marked with adverse information.

    Education is usually the most misrepresented piece of information on an applicant's resume. An example of adverse information would be the graduation date being more than a year off, what the school's records are, so to dive deeper into education verifications. With these, we typically look at the highest level of education as well as a high school diploma verification.

    These verifications look at degree type, major, sometimes GPA. We look at the degree type, the major, sometimes the GPA, enrollment dates, graduation date, and reason for leaving. If they're able to give us all that information, we'll take it. We like to also get the verifiers information as well, if we call them directly. And we also do have a spot on our forms that we send out to these facilities, so they can provide us with their name and position before sending it back to us as well.

    So why should you run education verifications? This ensures that the applicant is fully qualified for the position that they are applying for. It avoids liabilities such as hiring an unqualified applicant and putting the employer or other employees at risk of injury. This helps us to identify fake degrees and diplomas because it is unfortunately very easy to fake diplomas these days.

    Seriously, just try it for yourself. You can go online and just look up a diploma, print it out, and obtain a job. Unfortunately, that is definitely something we look for and deal with on a weekly basis. Lastly, just to verify industry specific credentials. You know, healthcare facilities, education centers, legal centers, et cetera. They all have specific requirements needed to perform the work. And we are just looking to help you guys make sure that your applicants do have the credentials that they share with you.

    So next we have employment verifications. An employment verification includes the applicant start and end date, sometimes their salary, their position, their eligibility for rehire and their reason for leaving the company.

    And again, they might not be able to provide us all this information, but we do ask for all this information, and we mark down everything that they are able to give us. Similar to education verifications, we also get the verifier information as well. And if anything ever goes wrong, or we ever have to go back to it, we always know directly who we can ask for when reaching back out to the employment and say, you know, you gave us this information, we noticed something was wrong, would you mind rechecking it for us.

    Why you should run employment verifications? One reason is to see how well the applicant will fit into the culture of your work environment. It can uncover different perspectives on why applicants leave past jobs, and that can help you determine if you know they might have a similar situation with you, or if you think they would be a better fit for your position.

    Employment verifications also validate applicant skills. They confirm the applicant is able to do everything they say they are responsible for doing or were responsible to doing at a past job. And it helps to find strengths and weaknesses that the applicant maybe didn't mention originally.

    And of course, employment verifications also validate the title and position and helps you to determine whether or not they were in a position, you know, comparable or that will prepare them for the position that they're applying for with you. We follow many practices when running employment verifications, and one main one is to use caution when verifying the applicant's current employer.

    Contacting a current employer without direct consent will very likely compromise the applicant's relationship with that employer, and this could kind of turn them off to you in the process. So we don't ever want to do anything that would make the applicants uncomfortable, and we just want to make sure that they are comfortable before we do reach out to a current employment.

    Another practice we follow is to identify the employer's phone number independently. A lot of times an applicant will provide us with a phone number to reach out to, but we do like to do that additional research on our own, because unfortunately it is very easy to maybe just give us the phone number to your friend and be like, Hey, can you help me out here?

    And, you know, tell these people that I worked here for x amount of time or an X amount of positions. And so we just like to reach out to them directly and, you know, get the information directly from somebody within the company who is currently there, if possible. It sounds ridiculous, but these are things that we unfortunately deal with day to day.

    Another practice we follow is to be consistent in the total years we search back for with employment history. Most employments, or most employers, I'm sorry, usually searched for either seven or 10 years in the past. Either is acceptable. We just recommend that you make it uniform for all your applicants and, you know, be mindful of younger applicants.

    Maybe they haven't worked all those years or haven't had as many jobs. And then of course we show our due diligence. Employment verifications can be not the most fun sometimes. Sometimes we have to reach out to many, many people to find the information that we need, but we just want to ensure that we have the correct applicant and that we're getting the correct information before sending it over to you.

    And lastly, we have reference verifications. So reference verifications are usually customized to an extent. We have two types of references being professional and personal, and within professional we also have direct report professionals where we will try to obtain a manager, supervisor, teacher, somebody that.

    The applicant has had to directly report to in the past and get some feedback from them as well. Typically, we see two professional references and one personal reference being most wanted to be obtained, but we do see all sorts of different combinations. And why should you run reference verifications?

    While professional references can comment on applicant's ability, experience, and background within the field that you are in, or even if it's not the field that you're in, it's still just a professional setting and professional environment. And that's definitely good to get a feel for. We also can find out strengths and weaknesses of an applicant that they may be not mentioned on their own, didn't mention in the interview, and didn't mention in conversation.

    You can really get a feel for the type of relationship an applicant has had in their work environment. Personal references we've noticed, it definitely helps to find more character traits and habits outside the workplace.

    And it helps us determine if an applicant acts the same around their friends as they do around their coworker, if they show the same amount of respect, et cetera. We need to be very specific with applicants about what qualifies as a professional reference, what qualifies as a personal reference.

    Because a lot of times we see people providing maybe their parents or, you know, cousins, aunts, uncles, sister, brother, and we have to reach out to them and let them know that unfortunately, that bias will not count as a reference, and they just end up having to provide us an additional one anyway. So we try to be very specific about what we're asking for when we initially ask for that information.

    And especially with professional references, we definitely prefer direct phone contact to just really get a feel for how, you know, for the relationship and how this person may feel about the applicant. Those are our three major verifications here at Commercial Investigations. And all of those can be customized.

    For example, reference questions can be changed. We can add a question that may be very important to you. And make sure that we're asking the references that question as well, even if it's not on our standard form. You can customize the criteria for conducting anything such as, you know, with employment history, how many years we look back, how many references you want, how many employers you want us to reach out to, anything like that.

    And lastly, our adverse information guidelines. Something of our standard policy to mark as adverse may not be very important to you. And it may be something that. You might want us to not mark as adverse, just so that doesn't show up as adverse, and that is something we can customize as well.

An overview of the OIG and GSA Exclusion Lists (6:34)

  • Exclusions are monitoring have become a critical tool for ensuring compliance program integrity and safety. There's two main exclusion lists that we search daily. The first being the Office of Inspector General, or OIG. This list maintains primarily federal excluded individual or providers and entities that disbar those from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federally financed healthcare programs.

    The second list that we search is the General Services Administration. This list maintains the SAM database and is not necessarily as industry-specific, but the GSA list is a roster of individuals and organizations that are not eligible to participate in federal and state contracts due to criminal behavior or misconduct.

    States can have their own Medicaid exclusion lists. These lists are called Medicaid Fraud Control Units, or MFCs, 43 states have programs like this. And out of the 43 states, each state varies on the information required to search for an excluded individual or entity.

    Congress first mandated exclusions in 1977. After the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, as well as the Balanced Budget Act, were enacted in 1997. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General was actually given the authority to create the list of excluded individuals and entities.

    The states are required to inform the OIG of actions taken at the state level, and these actions usually include criminal behavior and misconduct, and actions are always taken through the MFCs. The OIG list is updated each month and can levy significant civil fines to those who violate it. The main effect of an exclusion is that no payment will be made for any items or services provided by an excluded individual or entity.

    Now, as I mentioned before, the OIG has authorization to exclude any individuals, providers, or entities that have been convicted of criminal behavior and misconduct. The OIG does break it down into two different types of exclusion lists based on the severity of the offense that was committed. The first list is the mandatory exclusion list, and so the OIG is required to exclude any individual providers or entities that have been convicted of a felony. And the OIG has no discretion of any kind of the mandatory exclusions.

    So a couple of offenses that are felonies are Medicare, medicaid fraud, patient abuse or neglect, fraud theft, general financial misconduct, or any kind of felony conviction related to controlled substances.

    The other list is the permissive list. Now the permissive list is not necessarily, there has a little bit more leeway than the mandatory list. So permissive is anybody who is committed a misdemeanor. They may or may not be placed on the exclusion list, but the OIG has, in this case, discretion to issue them on and place them on the exclusion list.

    Those on the permissive list are anybody who conducts or commits a misdemeanor offense. So misdemeanors include Medicare or Medicaid fraud, government funded fraud, misdemeanors related to controlled substances, suspension, revoke or surrendering of licenses, it could even be defaulting on an education loan.

    So the OIG is mainly for those in healthcare, and the GSA has a much larger scope. Getting into the GSA, the GSA maintains a centralized database for government contracting known as SAM, or System of Award Management. This is a procurement database that includes all contractors approved and excluded from doing business with the federal government.

    SAM was implemented in 2012 and collects information from multiple databases. And some of those databases are the central contractor registry, federal agency registration, excluded party systems, and OIGs list of excluded individuals. The two main differences between both OIG and GSA is the GSA does not have as much power to levy fines or penalties like the OIG does, but for the basis of exclusion, OIG is relatively straightforward. For contracted individuals that can be excluded on the GSA for a variety of reasons.

    Some of those reasons include foreign nationals that are barred from entering the US, individuals that have violated national security protocol, conviction of tax fraud, and again, default on a student loan. The GSA database is also more difficult to navigate than the OIG. GSA exclusions require a Dun in Bradstreet number of entity.

    GSA databases do not include providers license numbers or NPI data. Here at CI, we have a search that is exclusive to us, it's called the Healthcare Comply Plus Search. So in addition to searching both OIG and GSA, we also have the ability to search agency databases. So the Healthcare Comply Plus search is much more comprehensive because we look into both current and historic data.

    When conducting the Healthcare Comply Plus search, we are also able to find disciplinary actions taken on individuals licenses or certifications throughout all 50 states, and basically overall the healthcare compliance search is all-inclusive. That is available to healthcare individuals and contractors for the sanctions, described previously, and for any actions covered by the Patriot Act.

    And that's all that I have.

The Basics of the National and State Sex Offender Registry (9:58)

  • Speak about the sex offender registry, it's one of the things that we do here every day. It's an essential tool that we use for any business that is going to be working with youth, children, the elderly, disabled, anyone that's working with the public on a regular basis. You're going to want to run the sex offender database to make sure that consumers, clients, whoever you're doing searches on are going to be as safe as they possibly can be.

    Little background on the Sex offender registry. In 1938, the Los Angeles Police Department established its Bureau of Sex Offenses. They kept fingerprints and photographs for those who were convicted of sexual offenses. It wasn't until 1945 that the next state, California, passed the nation's first sex offender registration law in order to give police departments a way to track the known offenders. Then in 1990, Washington State became the first to establish a sexual predator law and established a registry.

    It's a system for community notification. It established indefinite sentencing and created a tiered system of perceived risk. The sex offender registries online started in 1994 with the Jacob Wetterling Act. Using the Jacob Wetterling Act, they created a registry of convicted offenders that were charged with offenses against children.

    It did several things, it established a baseline of standards for states to register sex offenders. It created a heightened class of offenders known as sexually violent predators or SVPs. It required that they verify their address every 90 days for those that were designated as sexually violent predators and annually for all of their offenders.

    They also created the first set of, of federal procedures for notifying the public of anyone who had been convicted of a sex offense. And then in 1996, they introduced Megan's Law, which was an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Act. And the Megan's Law was used to implement a registration and community notification laws for each state until 1990.

    Well, they had until the end of 1997 to register everyone for each state, kind of gave them like a final timeline for when they had to have the registration completed by. Prior to this, Megan's law, only five states required sex offenders to register with law enforcement at all. So, it took a while, but finally everyone got registered. The National Sex Offender Registry, which is one that I personally do, was started in addition to Megan's Law, and it was started with the Adam Walsh Act in 2006, and it created a national sex offender registry, and also created the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which we call SORNA. Prior to SORNA states had the individual discretion to decide between who was considered a high risk and a low risk.

    And it was pretty much based on which offenses the offender had made. So they had their own discretion to decide instead of being on a federal level. The US Department of Justice is who oversees the National Sex Offender Registry. It's not overseen by the federal branch, it's just the Department of Justice.

    The states themselves have a grace period in and of themselves to update the registry on their own. They're required to update it, and once that information has been updated, they have to insert that information into SORNA, the sex offense registry, so that everyone in the public would be able to, to access that information. The sex offender registry, the national search, is a very broad search. We start out by searching by a person's first name and last name, and anyone in all the 50 states territories would fall into that search that has a matching name or possibly a pseudonym that is within that first name, last name.

    So if we were to search for Will and a last name, anyone that goes by Will or William will pop up in that search. And then we will narrow it down based on the person's personal information, whether it be date of birth, the person's address, let's see, what else do we use? Middle initials, anything that we can use of their personal information to narrow down until we find the person that is actually the subject we're searching for.

    The broad search is useful as a tool because we're able to do it such an extensive search through all 50 states, it is possible to go to another state and commit a crime and not be registered in that state as someone who lives in that state, so the national database made it much more complicated for people to do so.

    We do that search here, and it is, a very broad one. When we do find something that would come back from a different state, like say our subject says they only lived in New York, and we do a search, and we come back with the results from somewhere like Puerto Rico, we can then go through the territory of Puerto Rico that, I'm not sure if it's a territory or province off the top of my head right now, but we would go through the, the procedures for Puerto Rico, and we would go to the state level to find more precise information as to what the tier and the safety, level of that person is, and at that point we would switch over to the statewide searches, which Kayla knows all about the statewide searches,

    In regards to New York State, the New York State Sex Offender Registration Act took effect on January 21st, 1996, and it's run by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice or the DCJS. When a person is convicted of a sexual offense in New York State, they are given a risk level. Now these, there are three types of risk levels.

    A level one, which is a low risk offender. They're required to register with the DCJS for 20 years, a level two, which is a moderate. They must register for life and a level three, which is a high risk, and they too much must register for life. But these individuals are also considered a threat to public safety.

    Risk levels are determined by the court's assessment regarding whether the person in question is likely to repeat the offense and the danger that they pose to the community. Information about level two and three offenders is publicly available, however, information about level one offenders and offenders whose risk levels are yet to be determined that is not publicly available.

    We here at CI are able to make contact with the DCJS and inquire about information such as risk level, the offense, committed, the victim, any special conditions or designations, designations, the courts. Designations to individuals, as Josh said earlier, one is a sexually violent offender. There are others such as a sexual predator or a predicate sex offender.

    Now, if an offender receives a designation, they're required to register with the DCJS for life, regardless of their risk level. The New York State Sex Offender Registry Act does not restrict where an offender may live. However, if an offender is under parole or probation, they may be prohibited from living within a thousand feet of the school or other facility that cares for children.

    Those registered with the New York State Sex Offender Registry are required to do a couple of things, such as annually report where they're living and submit updated photos, as Josh said earlier. They're required to do that every three years. However, level three offenders and those designated sexual predators must confirm their address every 90 days, and they must submit updated photos annually rather than every three years.

    Offenders must notify the DCJS in writing of any new address within 10 days, along with any higher education that they may be attending. Any changes to their status in education also must be reported within 10 days of that change. The DCJS must be notified of any employer name and address information, and they are to provide the names of internet service providers, screen names and email accounts.

    Here at CI, we recommend doing both of those searches. The National Sex Offender Registry does not tell the level of offense, only that the individual is registered. Now, the state sex offender registry is the only place to get the level of the offender.

Continuous Monitoring Solutions (5:51)

  • Hello. Nice to meet you, so vigilant is our way of saying continuous monitoring. These solutions provide alerts immediately following an arrest conviction, court appearance, or in some cases, like you'll hear today, a driving accident or medical license suspension. Vigilant monitoring is different from pre-employment check or a post-hire periodic rescreen.

    It's different in that it allows employers to be informed at the earliest possible point of intervention. Rather than searching your applicant's name in a national criminal database, an entire employee list can be uploaded and constantly compared with the updated vigilant list. Businesses choose to perform continuous monitoring for a number of reasons, but the most popular include workforce visibility, which is instead of finding out about a suspended license weeks or months after, an employer can find that information in days.

    That also includes better regulatory compliance, ease of monitoring in real-time results. Real-time results is a bit of a stretch, we admit, but the results usually take between 24 and 48 hours. Here at CI, we are able to offer four continuous monitoring options. Jen will take you through those, New York, US and lens later, and I will start with our vigilant meds, used exclusively for the medical industry.

    So MEDS stands for a medical exclusion data set. If you want to learn more about exclusion lists, you can watch a webinar in them or our website. Basically, an exclusion list is a list of individuals that are barred from doing business within the federal government for a variety of reasons usually, the two main exclusion lists are the OIG and GSA.

    The OIG is exclusively for medical professionals and needs to be monitored closely by those doing business in that field. License suspension, revocation or expulsion are more common than you might think, and the OIG list is the only place to find that information. The other, more general exclusion list is the GSA, which is not industry specific.

    The GSA maintains the same database, the SAM database, excuse me, that some of you're probably familiar with. So what does Vigilant Meds do? Vigilant meds take the OIG, GSA and over 1700 other sources of healthcare data and compiles them into one searchable data. It is able to tell us any vendor, employee, provider, or volunteer has had any regulatory actions taken against them.

    These include any sanctioned data, disbarment and excluded individual data. All of this is done with very little client interaction. You are able to upload employee data through our HIPAA-compliant site. Any information matching your employee data will automatically trigger an alert and for more general searches. Jen will explain our vigilant US New York and lens.

    Hi everyone. So vigilant New York is, once an employee is hired, most organizations no longer look into an employee's background. In the past it has been because there was no real automated way to perform these checks, but now there is. It's specifically tailored to New York State using several proprietary databases that we have access to.

    One of them being the New York State Sheriff's Association. Vigilant New York is able to alert an employer of an employee's arrest in New York State within 24 to 48 hours. The search is performed in a similar way to Vigilant Meds. An employer can upload an employee data set and that that can be constantly compared with the criminal data.

    The search, is, is performed in a similar way. Oh, all that means, I'm sorry. All that means is there is very little effort on the end user. Once the employee information is uploaded, the search will do the work for anyone in New York. We would recommend this as the primary continuous option. If your business operates across the country, we do have an option for that as well, which is the vigilant US.

    And that is able to alert you of an employee, volunteer tenant or board member’s arrest in the United States. Vigilant US searches, our multi-jurisdictional criminal database, national sex offender registry, and a global anti-terrorist list. The database combines court records, incarceration records, prison inmate records, probation, parole and release record information, arrest data, and warrants. It is performed the same way.

    The New York is usually get results within one to two days. And lastly, the motor vehicle specific searches. We have the lens, which is continuous DMV monitoring that has become the most widely accepted form of vigilant searches so far.

    And businesses that employ drivers should be thinking about a continuous DMV monitoring program. LENS stands for license event notification service. The search alerts any changes to the employer. Every day Lens is able to alert you of an accident, convictions expiration, license status changes, suspensions, rev revocations, and we are able to get any information change instantly, and can report a full abstract if requested.

    Companies like Uber and Lyft have adopted this continuous monitoring practice, and we expect to see a lot more follow in their

The Preadverse and Adverse Action Process (9:35)

  • I'm Yvette, and so it's very nice to see you all today. First, we're going to start out by talking about, pre-adverse action letters. Of course, everyone wishes and hopes that a hiring process is going to go smoothly. But sometimes when you're working on a preemployment background investigation, it's going to reveal some adverse information that maybe is incompatible with the position that you're hiring for.

    In this case, you may choose to deny employment to someone. There's a defined adverse action process for that. We are going to go ahead and explain what that adverse action, what an adverse action is. Adverse action in employment is anything that changes an applicant's employment status negatively.

    Most commonly, it's applied to the hiring process when an employer decides not to hire someone. Because adverse action negatively impacts the consumer, it could often lead to some type of litigation. To minimize that risk, of any type of litigation and to protect the consumers, the Fair Credit Reporting Act has established a set of procedures that all companies must follow if they choose to take any adverse action of any kind. Let's imagine that the hiring scenario that I talked about earlier happens to you. An applicant gets an investigation done, and the individual has a criminal history that won't allow them to work that particular job.

    You decide that you're not going to hire that person. The first thing that you should do is send out a pre-adverse action letter. What is a pre-adverse action letter, you might ask? A pre-adverse action letter is a notice to the applicant stating the contents of the report, that their contents of the report may adversely affect the employer's hiring decisions, and that the applicant has the right to dispute the accuracy and the completeness of the information that the report contains.

    The employers send the pre-adverse letter before taking any adverse action against the applicant. The letter needs to include a few specific enclosures that the applicant has the right to see. We're gonna talk about New York specifically, the applicant would need to receive a copy of their entire background investigation report, a copy of New York State Article 23 A, and the FCRA Notice of Rights. If someone lives or if the business is in New York City, there's an additional, what's called a Fair Chance Act form that needs to be completed and added to the pre-adverse letter as well.

    In our software, the enclosures that need to be included are all part of the applicant's report, which you can download as a PDF. In any of the state specific forms, the information is captured when the applicant first fills out their personal information through our portal. The correct form is then automatically linked depending on the address that the applicant has filled out in that form.

    We would recommend sending the pre-adverse letter by certified mail, so you can confirm that the applicant has received it. Once the applicant does receive the letter, they have the opportunity to dispute any information that they feel is inaccurate or incomplete. The FCA has given the recommendation of waiting five to seven business days before then sending the adverse action letter, which we'll talk about in a moment, which gives the applicant time to dispute any information if they choose to do so.

    Now I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Gillian, and she is going to explain the process of a dispute. So take it away, Gillian.

    Thank you, Yvette. Here at CI, we use primary source verification. So if you have to verify a diploma, we'll call the school directly. The same goes for employment, we'll call the employer directly. However, mistakes like basic human errors do happen, especially in data entry. It can cause a potentially good applicant to be rejected from a job. If an applicant wants to dispute adverse information on their report, they would reach out to us, and we would put them in touch with the investigators that handle the disputes.

    That investigator would get the information that is being disputed from the applicant and have them fill out a disclosure request form, that we send to them via email, which they would then send, fill it out and send it back to us. The form is meant to confirm the written description of the dispute.

    We will immediately open a reinvestigation even before receiving the form back as well. We notify the client that their applicant is disputing information and just recommend them not to make any adverse action against them yet. The investigator will then reach back out to the primary source that we obtain the information from and re-verify the information.

    The FCRA legally gives us 30 days to complete the reinvestigation, but we normally have it done within a couple of days. And once the reinvestigation is complete, if the disputed information is accurate and up to date. There'll be no changes made to the original report. But if the information is found to be different, the original report will be changed to reflect that updated information and both the client and applicant are emailed and notified along the way of when the reinvestigation starts and when it's completed and whether there are changes or no changes on the report.

    And then, on a final note, we get a lot of questions about disputes and credit reports. We are unable to change any of that information, so we would direct the applicant to contact TransUnion directly. Yvette will now wrap up the adverse letter process.

    Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, the recommended time to wait between sending out a pre-adverse action letter and an adverse action letter is five to seven business days.

    The adverse action letter then informs the applicant that you're officially not going to hire them for that job. Again, we recommend sending the adverse letter through certified mail, so you can confirm that the applicant did. In our software, we have the pre-adverse and adverse action letters already built for you, so you don't have to spend time filling them out.

    The applicant's personal information is automatically uploaded in the letter, and it will let the client know what enclosures are needed. You can also copy and paste that information onto your letterhead if you want to have the letter, with your letterhead, that you can do as well. All the procedures that we've talked about today are recommendations.

    You know, we're not telling you how to operate your hiring process or give you any suggestions or advice on individual applicants. You would have to decide on your own, and your company policies as far as hiring somebody. We want to be careful that whatever we're doing for one person, we're doing for another person, we want to keep things consistent.

    You want to be sure that you're sending these letters out to everybody. I suggest sending out your pre-adverse letter, you know, putting something on your calendar possibly to remind you in five to seven business days to then go ahead and send out the adverse action letter. Now I'm going to have Alex share his screen, so he can show you where to find these letters in an applicant's report, just to show you how easy it is.

    Right now, I am in our software called CIware. I am in an applicant report, and that name of the applicant is test tester. Obviously we don't want to give any personal information or anything like that away, but here on the right-hand side, under this actions tab, you can see these two links here.

    The adverse action letter, and then the pre-adverse action letter. So we have these templates all ready to go for you. This is our pre-adverse section. Notice, all of that applicant information is already thrown in there for you. It also lets you know what enclosures you will need to have.

    Not all pre-adverse and adverse section letters are exactly the same. So if you want to take this and have your legal team review it, like Yvette said, that would be a good thing as well. And I'll go over here real quick and just so the pre or the adverse as well, again, that applicant information and then our information as well.

    So let me stop my share, and then I'm actually going to stop the recording as well.

Breaking Down Professional License Verification (7:18)

  • Talking about professional licensing. If your company requires licensed professionals to perform specific works, professional license verifications should play a key role in your hiring process. Professional licenses help ensure that professionals across the range of fields hold the necessary qualifications to engage in highly specialized work.

    A New York State license is valid for the life of the holder unless revoked, annulled or suspended by the Board of Regents or other governing board. Faking these documents is more common than you might think, so we recommend not taking these at face value. Hiring individuals who do not have the proper licenses can endanger your employees, customers, and vendors.

    It can also damage the reputation of your business and increase the risk of legal action and penalties. For this presentation, we're focusing mainly on New York, but there are national accreditations that you can search as well. New York's registry is maintained by the Office of Professions through the Department of Education.

    There are literally thousands of different licenses required to work in New York, but we break it down into three categories, Medical, financial, and general / overall category, that ever popular Miscellaneous. The first and largest category is medical field. There is no shortage of positions, but some of the more common licenses that need to be checked are registered nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, social workers, and therapists.

    A New York State physician license has a laundry list of requirements, some of them being proof of medical education, a proficiency examination, and hospital training. So some people try to avoid all of that. One of the biggest misconceptions about professional licenses in general is that a degree is a substitute for certification or a license.

    It is not, they are separate things, and while a degree may lead to a license, it is not a valid indicator. One of the reasons people try to use degrees is because you have to update your license every so often. For example, registered nurses in New York must renew their licenses every three years, and medical doctors must complete an infection control training every four years.

    We've all found out recently how important that infection control is. There are a mountain of other requirements that each individual job must meet with most licenses, having multiple recurring requirements. Permits are the closest thing to licenses, and at that point it is up to the organization's discretion to decide if that meets their requirements for hiring.

    Permits allow an individual to practice medicine under the supervision of a New York state licensed and currently registered physician. Normally these last two years, but they can be renewed for an additional two years after if the individual shows they are making progress toward a license.

    There is a lengthy process to even get a physician permit in New York, so some people try to get by with just that degree. Again, here at Commercial Investigations, we are able to see if there are any outstanding requirements that need to be renewed, as well as any disciplinary action that might have been taken against an individual.

    So if your business employs any individual that requires a medical license, we strongly recommend that you verify those before hiring and continue verification when after the hiring is done. Now I will turn it over to my colleague, Kim, to explain the financial category.

    Thank you, Nancy. So financial licenses are mostly condensed into brokers and accountants. At CI, we normally deal with accountants, but do check insurance and also real estate brokers as well. Accountants can be found on the Office of Professions Registry, but also brokers are on a different website called FINRA. So accountants have a long list of requirements as well, and are required to renew a New York State license every three years.

    Like some medical positions, accountants have to do something called continuing education as they receive their license or a CPE license. New York State requires 24 to 40 hours of education annually to return to retain a license for this, that starts on January 1st. Focus licenses in New York generally have to be renewed every two years, and there is continuing education involved again, so the funeral license checks are usually instant, and they can recover a focus employment history, any regulatory actions taken against them, and investment related licensing information as well. While most of these licenses are focused on two major professions, any employee that handles money in your business could be responsible for renewing a license.

    The last category is one that we call general, and these professions can work in multiple fields. The general category is by for the most diverse with some of the jobs here, including athletic trainers, architects, engineers, interior designers, and also land surveyors.

    All of these professions have differing requirements for renewal and accreditation. One of the weirder examples we know of is that engineers, engineers, need to renew their license every three years on the, on the last day of the month of the licensee's birthday. And if you're as bad as remembering your friend's birthday as Alex is, then how would you track all of these licenses?

    So usually organizations that employ these professions deal with more than one license, like an architect or an engineer working together. The New York State Office of Professions is nice in that all these records can be found in one place, which is the best, and it's the easiest to use as well.

    And again, these jobs all have some form of continuing education. Most commonly 36 hours of training within three years. So finally, here at CI, we recommend checking any employee that is required to have a license at least once when you hire them, and we can't make those decisions for you, but continuously checking that these have been renewed is also recommended.

    So anybody have any questions?

Rules for Hiring Summer Volunteers in 2022 (4:34)

  • Today we are going to talk about some of the challenges and best practices associated with hiring volunteers. Some nonprofits feel that an in depth background check is overkill or too expensive, but there are legitimate reasons to screen every one of your volunteers. Some of the most common reasons we see are to protect vulnerable populations, provide a safe environment, and protect the organization's reputation.

    Before we get into it, I need to lay some background. The Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA is the federal law, which sets minimum wage, over time, record keeping, and child labor standards. The Wage and Hour division of the US Department of Labor enforces the FLSA. The FLSA is federal law, but New York State has their own definition of volunteer and associated laws as well.

    New York State defines a volunteer as a person who works for the non-profit-making institution under no contract of hire express or implied, and with no promise of compensation other than reimbursement for expenses as part of the conditions of work. So to break this down a little more, in the State of New York, volunteers cannot expect or receive compensation for service.

    And again, reimbursement for expenses is not considered compensation. Any compensation beyond reimbursement for expenses though moves the person from the category of volunteer and into the category of employment. And yes, a gift card would count as payment. New York State volunteers also cannot displace any genuine or paid employees.

    They can only do tasks traditionally reserved for volunteers. This law's confusing. The DOL does not have a set definition of what those tasks include ironically, but, the DOLs position then is that a volunteer could not provide services that would normally be or reasonably be expected to be performed by a paid employee.

    New York State volunteers also cannot be forced to do things involuntarily. They can have no forced hours, and in fact can only work certain hours. So this is a great segue into our next section, which is talking about some challenges. For the most part, non-profits have busy seasons where they need to get a ton of volunteers and in through the system.

    In the past, the standard procedure would be to fill out a consent form on paper and fax it to your CRA. This process could possibly be super quick with the right applicant, but it's also equally possible that it does take unnecessarily long. We work around this by having a software that allows the end user to send an order invite with just the applicant's first and last name, as well as their email address, and once they fill out their information, we start working on it immediately, and it saves hours of copying information.

    Another issue that this brings up is consent. Long gone are the days of faxing those over as well. Our system captures consent, authorization, and disclosure all through the online form, streamlining your process and making the applicant’s experience frictionless. The last major concern is, of course, cost.

    A lot of CRAs have what we call box packages. Those are the ones that you have to squeeze into, even if it doesn't quite fit. At CI, we do have a standard non-profit package, but we also have the ability to customize your package to fit your exact needs. In any case, if you're going to hire volunteers this year, we do have some recommendations for you to think about.

    The first ties right back into cost. New York State criminal searches go through the New York State Office of Court Administration or the OCA. They currently charge $95 per name to search using their database. So we have a direct answer in our service, Cursory Indicator. In New York, CI NY, as we call it, takes a cursory look at an applicant and if there is no adverse information, then there's no need to run the OCA.

    CI NY is compliant when there is no adverse information, costing about a third of what the OCA charges. It's also included in the non-profit best practices package. Another recommendation we have would be to have a professional CRA do any Sex Offender Act researches in New York. Anyone in this zoom is able to go find level two and level three information from the public New York State Registry.

    However, level one information is locked behind a gatekeeper, and you would need to call in and try to get the information that. We have a dedicated representative at the registry that we are able to go directly to for those searches. If you take nothing else away from the session, whatever you do, do not think you are covered by a free background check.

    Free checks are almost always either incomplete or inaccurate, and they can put your organization at a serious risk. Trust the professionals.

Best Practices for DMV & Motor Vehicle Reports (5:14)

Special Geust Carl Telban, Owner of WorkSmart Revolution also joins to give his input on the operational side.

  • To identify unsafe applicants, in some states convictions for driving under the influence will only be revealed on a motor vehicle report, not on the criminal side. They aren't exactly complicated. The search is done by entering the applicant's personal information into the state specific DMV database.

    That personal information is the standard full name, social security number, address, history. Some states will go as far as asking for gender, height, weight, eye, and hair color as well. In New York State, there are three types of driving records, also called abstracts. The first is a standard driving record.

    This shows your record information for the minimum length of time as defined by the vehicle and traffic law. Most suspensions are displayed for four years from the date the suspension ended, but there are times it goes to five years. Accidents and traffic convictions are displayed until the current year ends, plus another three years. Any conviction for driving under the influence is displayed for 15 years from the date of conviction, and serious crimes like homicide never go away.

    The second type of report is a lifetime record. This record shows all the license information the DMV currently has available about the applicant. All information is available regardless of the vehicle and traffic law, and data retention requirements.

    It will go back to when the applicant first got their permit. Besides the time difference, there are some minor changes in the lifetime. The suspension category is broken down into two parts, scofflaws and non scofflaws. The only difference is scofflaws are a suspension as a result of not paying a fine. Non scofflaws are a suspension from anything other than not paying a fine. The other, more interesting change is that lifetime reports show boat and snowmobile suspensions as.

    And the last type of report is a commercial driver's license report or a CDL. This report shows information that is not available in a standard report. It includes suspensions, convictions, and other licensing actions in any state and any vehicle. It is still subject to the vehicle and traffic law, but it does show medical certification status and self-certification information compared to other industries. Driver turnover is extreme, and it doesn't show signs of stopping.

    With so many people switching jobs, the onboarding process can become a lot to handle. Internally, getting new applicants checked and through your internal process can be critical at times like these, with the required age limit being lowered to drive those big rigs. The applicant pool does increase, but so does liability.

    If something goes wrong, the best option is to get in front of these possible issues and try to stop them from ever happen. With these changes come regulation changes. The inherent dangers of being on the road means a lot of regulation. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or the FMCSA, maintains regulation over driver qualifications.

    Everything from licensing to maintaining files falls under their supervision. Background checks can ensure you are staying compliant with these new rule changes. And here at CI, we typically use the standard report. It is faster than the lifetime, and most employers don't want to pay for all the information dating back to an applicant's permit.

    We capture the licensee's address, class, date of birth, social security number, violations, accidents, suspensions, revocation, patterns of reckless behavior, insurance risks, and substance abuse. The standard Motor vehicle report is good for onboarding a new applicant, regardless of if they are going to be driving or not.

    However, for those employees that are going to be driving all the time, It is smart to keep an eye out for anything that might happen. Now, the Department of Motor Vehicle License Event Notification Service, also known as Lens Reviews, driver license records of your drivers and reports, changes to you by email.

    We call this Search Vigilant Lens, but really it's just continuous monitoring. Our system will instantly notify you of any accident, conviction, expiration, hazmat, or med cert changes, program completions status changes, and suspensions with the immediate identification and notification of an issue, you can remain confident you have the right person doing the right job.

    So Carl, I did mute you there on purpose, but did you have any thoughts, or you know, anything that we should emphasize?

    No, I mean, no, that, you know, that sounds pretty good. I mean, I don't think you want to overcomplicate things right now. Exactly. I think the real key is, is just, you know, there's a lot of stuff there. The main takeaway is there are a lot of little details there, so you have to have somebody involved that either is going to learn it all very quickly, or somebody that already knows it, that can help.

Best Practices for Hiring Nurses and Medical Staff (6:45)

  • Hello everybody. My name is Alex Skaine with the marketing team here at Commercial Investigations. We're very excited to bring this weekly program to you to help bring to light some of the things you should know to, to help protect you and your business during your hiring process.

    This informational session is called our What You don't know Webinar, featuring one of our many experts here at Commercial Investigations. This week we have a verification specialist, Emma Laughlin, and she'll be talking about kind of the recommendations and best practices for hiring nurses and medical staff.

    Before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping notes. We are gonna record, if there's any questions today, we'll record them, but that's kind of just for our use personally. If you have a question during the presentation, please feel free to put it in chat and I will read it for her after.

    We will record these sessions, like I said, to put on our YouTube and our website if you want to refer to it back there, but for any of that I will hand it over to Emma.

    Hi. So I'm Emma. I'm a verification specialist here at Commercial Investigations, and I'm talking today about the nurse aid registry and other types of medical licenses and things like that we do verify.

    We know how important it is to protect our vulnerable populations. We work with a number of healthcare organizations and medical staffing agencies, so we know how it could be a process to make sure you have the right person for the job. And on that, the fact that these organizations need multiple searches for different people, and it gets confusing quickly.

    Situations like that are why we started our What You Don't Know webinar, and today we'll cover our recommendations for our view on hiring healthcare professionals. We hope to give you something to think about with your background check process, and give you information to make the best hiring decisions.

    The most common position we screen are nurses in general. That includes positions like RN’s, nurse practitioners, CNAs, and home Health Aides. Licenses and certifications need to be searched differently as well, adding another layer to the issue. Also, like all of these webinars, we'll be focusing on the New York State licensing and requirements specifically as that is mainly where we operate.

    The searches we see the most in this field all have to do with verifications of some kind. Our main four verifications include employment references, educations, and professional license checks. Employment and reference verifications are pretty straightforward. There are some differences between each organization's requirements.

    For those verifications, though, at CI, we usually recommend 10 years of employment history and one personal and two professional reference. Things get interested when we get into the education and professional license checks, though licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners all have different levels of requirements and educations needed to obtain the title.

    Physicians, like a nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialists, need a master's degree to qualify and usually have multiple additional licenses to their name. For education verifications, we recommend just getting the highest level earned, but the higher the level usually means more licenses or certifications to be aware of. Luckily, we customize packages to the client, so a nurse practitioner wouldn't get the same check as an LPN. A nurse practitioner's check would be more extensive, with multiple license verifications in their feed of specialization.

    Now, earlier we said we screened CNAs and HHAs commonly as well, and you might be thinking those are certifications, not licenses. So how do you find those? Well, we're glad you asked. Certified nurse aids and home health aides have their own separate databases for finding out if a certification is valid.

    CNA certifications go through the Nurse Aid registry in New York. The search is done by full name and the applicant's date of birth. In other states, it is searched with the social security number instead of date of birth. The results will show any past abuse reports on the applicant certification details, last known employment, and where the applicant trained and completed their training.

    HHA certifications go through the home care registry similar to the nurse's aid, but we only perform those searches for New York. These searches are only done by name, and they find similar details like abuse records, but the home aid results are not as extensive as the nurse's aid.

    These searches can be done internally, but you might not get all the information available. It's best to work with a professional screener to save time and get the most information possible. And all of these license and certifications need to be renewed at some point too. A professional license check in the first background check is good, but most employers don't check again. CNAs and HHAs need to be renewed every two years, and positions like an RN are three years. During that time, a lot can happen. Surrounding exclusions and license violations, an automated solution to scanning the OIG exclusion list is CI's vigilant meds.

    Vigilant MEDS combines the OIG, GSA, and multiple other federal exclusion lists into one search. It is the easiest way to track any exclusion or regulatory acts taken against your applicant or employee. The Office of Inspector General is specifically for healthcare related actions and the general services administration, also known as Sam, covers all industries of.

    With MEDS, you can be sure you are getting the full exclusion picture on your applicant. All of our processes are built to streamline the application process and in a job market as crazy as this. The less friction overall, the better. Using a professional screening partner can drastically improve the number and quality of your applicants, as well as save your team valuable time.

    Now, this is a lot of information, so if you want to learn more, check out our website for a full description of all of our searches, and back to Alex.

    All right, thank you, Emma. I appreciate that. Very well done. Very well said. Thank you.

CI Leading The Way

Join Patricia, Brittany, Yvette, Derek, Craig, and Rachael to discuss some best practices and tricks to help you navigate our software! Ever wondered when to send that Pre Adverse or Adverse action letter? What about getting stuck in our software? Our trained investigators answer that and much more in our Leading The Way Series. Find all the episodes below!

1. Applicant Quick Invite

2. Billing and Invoicing

3. Pre Adverse and Adverse Action

4. Drug Testing

5. Report Customization

6. Website Overview

7. Reading a Report

8. Town Hall

9. Origin

10. Primary Source Verification

11. Decision Matrix

12. Background Screening Trends

13. Fingerprinting vs Investigations

14. Diplomas!

15. Disputes

16. Cyber Investigation

Applicant Quick Invite (23:44)

Billing and Invoicing (15:24)

Pre Adverse and Adverse Action (22:25)

Drug Testing (19:10)

Report Customization (27:15)

Website Overview & Client Services (17:06)

Reading a Report (28:38)

Town Hall (14:20)

Origin (13:30)

Primary Source Verification (12:09)

Our Decision Matrix (30:25)

Background Screening: Trends and Uses Today (27:22)

Fingerprinting vs. Background Investigations (12:52)

Diplomas! (18:48)

Disputes (16:02)

Cyber Investigation (11:06)